The inspirations and origins for our stories.
Rajiv Moté’s story “L’Appel du Vide” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 22 March 2019. “L’Appel du Vide,” French for “the call of the void,” is a phenomenon where a person standing at a precipice has the unreasonable, outrageous urge to step out into the abyss. Psychologists have studied this, and found that the urge isn’t suicidal, but an act of imagination that sparks the awareness of being alive. I wrote this story for a …
Vaya Pseftaki’s story “The Noise Inside” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 15 March 2019. The idea of a strange noise emanating from someone emerged as I was struggling with Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror. Around that time, I was also playing in a D&D campaign based on Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar books. This unholy combination produced the character of Sheyen, who, in the process of the story, mutated and bloomed. Kristeva’s theory of Abjection played …
Amman Sabet’s story “Absurd of a Feather” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 8 March 2019. This story was directly inspired by “Black Hole” By Charles Burns and “Uzumaki” by Junji Ito. However, I am sure there were many subconscious elements at play. when I wrote “Absurd of a Feather”, I was interested in the beauty and intimacy of what it feels like to find someone who is like you, contrasting that with the fear …
Carolyn Lenz’s story “Pleasing the Giants” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 1 March 2019. The initial idea for “Pleasing the Giants” came about when I heard a story about a man who successfully sued Disney World for psychological distress when he was trapped on the It’s a Small World ride for 40 minutes. Obviously my first thought was to wonder how long I could listen to that song on repeat without having a breakdown, …
L’Erin Ogle’s story “Mean Streak” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 22 February 2019. “Mean Streak” started when I tried to understand where hatred of a group of people different from someone came from. I have known intelligent, otherwise kind people I have stepped away from due to their opinions and beliefs about who counts as a person in the world today. Winnie, the main character, crept in my head and never left. Winnie hasn’t …
Catherine George’s story “The Bear Wife” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 15 February 2019. The first line of this story popped into my head while I, like the bear wife herself, was up in the middle of the night nursing a two-month-old baby. Around that time, I’d been researching local baby and mum yoga classes and reading animal wife and selkie stories, so apparently my sleep-deprived brain mashed the two together. I wrote the …
